The Little Gentleman

by Philippa Pearce

  Mrs Allum was dissatisfied. She said nothing more in the car on the way home, but, as soon as she saw her husband, she began again: ‘Look at the girl! What's wrong with her?’

  Old Mr Allum was impatient for his tea. He glanced at Bet. ‘There's nothing wrong with her – oh, well, yes, she's shrunk a little.’

  ‘She's what?’

  He shouted, ‘Woman, she's shrunk, and I want my tea!’

  ‘Shrunk?’ Mrs Allum was dumbfounded. ‘Of course, she hasn't shrunk! Children don't shrink, they grow. Shrunk, indeed! She just needs feeding up.’ And Mrs Allum gave Bet two poached eggs on toast to go with her tea.

  Bet's size had to be delicately readjusted at the very next meeting between herself and the mole. But they were both aghast at the risk they had taken so unthinkingly.

  For, on impulse, they had experimented with shrinkage in broad daylight in full view of the cottage. They were lucky that Mrs Allum had not noticed what they were up to.

  In future, they must do any experimenting and practice out of sight behind the log, instead of in front of it. That seemed a straightforward solution to their problem; but best perhaps not to make this move too obvious, too noticeable.

  Already Mrs Allum's suspicions had been roused. She had a feeling that some kind of mischief was going on in the meadow. And if Bet looked smaller – thinner – was her health at risk in some way? What might her mother have to say? Mrs Allum decided that Bet must regularly take a mug of milk with her to drink on the log. From the cottage Mrs Allum could watch her drink it.

  To begin with, Bet sat on the log, facing the river and drinking her milk.

  Then, on her next visit, she took her milk and sat on the ground behind the log, with the log at her back. From the cottage her grandmother could see the top of a head, and pretty soon a hand came up to leave an empty mug in place on the log.

  So that was still all right, more or less, from Mrs Allum's point of view.

  But, on yet another visit, Bet lay down on the ground. She had often done this before in front of the log, but now she was behind it, quite out of sight. Mrs Allum stared and waited. In due course a hand appeared and left the mug on the log. And that was that.

  ‘I don't like it,’ said Mrs Allum.

  The next time Bet disappeared from view in this way, Mrs Allum resolved to visit the log. She did not call Bet's name as she started out.

  The mole had just managed to reduce Bet to about nine-tenths of her normal size, when, from across the meadow, they heard the grind and creak of the gate being opened. They acted at once. They were becoming quite skilled at shrinkage and re-expansion, and the process was no longer jerky and unpredictable. By the time Mrs Allum loomed over the log, Bet had been returned to her usual appearance and was seemingly asleep on the grass, while the mole was out of sight in his tunnel.

  Without a word Mrs Allum picked up the empty mug and went back to the cottage. A day or two later she tried again – without success.

  By now the mole's nerves were on edge. He refused to practise shrinkage for more than a short time, and then only to an easily reversible degree. When would they ever have enough time – calm time – for what they planned?

  Then chance favoured their hopes. Mr Franklin was going to London for the day to consult some rare book in the British Library.

  Bet suggested to Mr Franklin that this was just the right moment, while he was in London, to let her grandmother clean his study. Mrs Allum had not been allowed to touch the room since he had first moved into the cottage. Mr Franklin himself admitted that by now it was a mess.

  Before he left for his day in London, he could stack his books and pile his papers, and then, as Bet pointed out to him, Mrs Allum would have several uninterrupted hours to sweep and mop and dust and polish.

  ‘But, please, don't tell my gran that it was my idea.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Very well.’

  There was still the possibility that Mrs Allum would break off, even from this most urgent cleaning, to see what might be going on at the log. Suppose she found nobody there?

  ‘But I think I can gain us time against such an eventuality,’ said the mole. His idea was to dig a new side tunnel from his main system, to come up behind one of the five big trees in the meadow, in a spot partly concealed by a branch recently fallen, still in full leaf. ‘By the time your grandmother has seen that you're not behind the log, you'll be your proper size behind the ash tree. She'll be in a muddle in her mind, but at least she'll have found you, safe and well.’

  ‘Will she notice anything – shall I be very dirty from having been underground?’

  ‘Not dirty.’ He was hurt at the suggestion. ‘Somewhat earthy, perhaps.’

  Bet had one last worry: ‘Just suppose it pours with rain, so that my gran won't let me go into the meadow at all?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the mole.

  This was a heatwave, however, that would not break for some time yet.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chthonic

  The mole was proud of what he called his word. He had had it from Miss X. It must be pronounced like ‘sonic’, but with a lisp at the beginning: chthonic. Miss X had even taught him the surprising spelling: c-h-t-h-o-n-i-c.

  ‘And there really is such a word?’ said Bet.

  ‘Indeed there is. Miss X used it of me and of my residence underground.’

  The mole and Bet were resting by the log after some practice at the early stages of shrinkage; and the mole was trying to prepare Bet for her descent into his tunnel system.

  He said, ‘Chthonic is the word used to describe an underworld beneath the surface of the earth. Such a world was well known to the Greek gods in ancient times. So Miss X told me, and she learnt of it from her father, the vicar, who was a Greek scholar. The word comes from the Greek.’

  ‘But there are no Greek gods there now?’

  ‘No,’ said the mole, ‘but who knows whom – or what – you may otherwise chthonically meet? Whatever happens, I shall be with you; you will have nothing to fear. And remember – you are probably the first human being ever to be so privileged.’

  Bet still worried. ‘Shall I have to meet your friends?’

  ‘My friends?’

  ‘You once said that in a pasture this size there would be other moles with their own tunnels. Shall I have to meet some of them?’

  The mole said, ‘Moles have no friends. Each mole has his – or her – own tunnel system. If one mole wanders into another mole's tunnel, there is a fight – if necessary, to the death. The only exception to this is in early spring, when a male seeks out a female to mate with. So the mole race can continue.’ The mole sighed heavily. ‘But this also witchcraft has deprived me of – the wish and the ability to procreate. However –,’ his tone brightened – ‘I have my tunnels still. Alone I dig them; alone I live in them.’

  ‘It sounds rather sad,’ said Bet.

  ‘No,’ said the mole. ‘This is mole nature. Human nature is different. Human beings seem to need friends. You must always have had friends.’

  Bet thought, Not really, but said nothing. Old Mr Allum did not like the idea of strangers, as he would have called them, coming to the house; and Mrs Allum did not like Bet to go visiting alone. But everything would be different when she was with her family in Disham. For one thing, Maddy would be a friend; Bet was almost sure of that.

  By now the thought of her next visit – a stay of several days and nights with her family – did not worry Bet at all. She looked forward to it. And before that there would be this extraordinary – this amazing – experience of venturing down into the mole's subterranean and labyrinth-like private residence: his chthonic home.

  The day of the great underground adventure dawned fine, with a promise of heat later. Mr Franklin went to London. Mrs Allum devoted herself to the spring-cleaning – out of season – of Mr Franklin's study. And the mole and Bet began to carry out their plan.

  They had pract
ised shrinkage and re-expansion many times, but only to very limited size-changes.

  ‘Now,’ said Bet with satisfaction, ‘we're going to go the whole hog.’

  ‘More accurately,’ said the mole, ‘the whole mole!’ He laughed at his own joke, but nervously. He had admitted to Bet his fear that, in reducing her to mole-size, he might (as he put it) ‘overdo things' and obliterate her entirely. But Bet trusted him.

  The beginning of shrinkage had become easy and smooth. This time, however, the pressure of the mole's will and of Bet's will, linked through finger-touch, had to continue far beyond that. They willed on together; and steadily Bet saw the log beside her grow upwards into a brown, rugged escarpment, at the foot of which she cowered, awed. The grasses became head-high green lances; a buttercup towered above her.

  She had an overwhelming, dizzy, headachy feeling; and, above all, she felt afraid – afraid of everything so unexpectedly big and threatening, and her own self so small and so defenceless.

  The mole's voice, on a level with her ear, was comforting: ‘The sooner we are down below, the better it will be for you. Follow me.’

  He made for his tunnel mouth, and Bet forced herself to follow him, scurrying through the grasses like the unlikely, terrified little creature she was.

  ‘Follow!’ and the mole was disappearing down his hole.

  Bet took a breath and followed, dropping on hands and knees as she did so.

  For a very short time daylight still reached them; then all was darkness.

  The mole had been right. Once below ground and in the dark, the headachy feeling and the fear left her. Always just ahead of her she heard the mole's voice: ‘Follow.’

  She was aware that she had become mole-like in more than size only. She had entered the mole's passageway on hands and knees, but that seemed to change. It was easier and faster to go on all fours, like any other four-footed animal, large or small. And the darkness – she was not sure whether the darkness round her was something she saw, or something which was there because her eyes were shut. She was not sure about her eyes. She tried to touch an eye, but could not find it. Without alarm, she wondered whether her eyes were now furred over. She was not certain whether she was girl or partly mole – most likely, perhaps, both at once. She found that she did not mind in the least.

  ‘Follow,’ said the mole.

  The air in the tunnel was pleasantly cool after the heat of the blazing sun outside, and the walls and roof of the tunnel were cool as she brushed against them. She could feel the earth firm-packed but not hard, and its outer surface often had a satiny feel as of a very thin skin that could be broken through almost at a touch. A brief sound ahead, more of a slithering than a scrabble, suggested that something was indeed coming through – some tiny living creature – and she felt the mole pause and heard his jaws snap, and then he mumbled, ‘Delicious!’ before moving on.

  ‘Follow,’ he said again; and they branched off into a side shaft, and the floor beneath Bet began gently to slope downwards. Her foot knocked against something embedded in the floor: for a moment she thought it must be some kind of paving stone. But – no, it felt metallic, and the edge that poked from the earth was curved. She called the mole back to ask him about it. ‘You would be surprised,’ he said, ‘at what is let fall in a pasture; and whatever it is then works down into the earth. Perhaps, say, a button.’

  What an enormous button! Bet thought doubtfully; and then she remembered her own size.

  ‘Follow,’ called the mole, from ahead, and Bet hurried to catch up with him again. The floor of the tunnel still sloped down – down…

  She followed; but she was often lingering like a traveller in a strange land, wanting to miss nothing – the layers of curious smells, none of them offensive to a girl who was also part mole; the heavy silence, and then the minute sounds of movement; the feel of earth above, below, around. They were now certainly much deeper underground than they had been before.

  She had dawdled, and suddenly she was no longer aware of the mole ahead. That friendliness had gone. She seemed to have entered – or had it come up round her? – a kind of hollow, booming blacker-than-blackness that now filled the tunnel from side to side, from floor to top. It was like a huge wave, a high tide, an ocean that flowed round her and through her. It had no voice, and yet she heard its singing:

  ‘Mole –

  Tunnel-digger –

  Hill-raiser –

  Worm-hunter –

  Brother-battler –

  Earth-master –

  Mole –’

  She crouched on the floor of the tunnel, overwhelmed, speechless, until at last whatever it was had ebbed or thinned or seeped away, and finally had gone. Then the mole was there again: ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘What – oh, what was it?’ whispered Bet.

  ‘What was what?’

  She could not possibly describe it properly. ‘A huge sort of – partly a booming – no, an echo of something like – oh, a noise that I never – ever —’

  ‘The tunnels are full of noises; and moles are an ancient race – older far than any Greek gods. Take heart. Follow, and I'll show you a curiosity.’

  Still fearful, she followed him closely now. They crept for some way along a main tunnel and then along shafts branching off and upwards again – ‘Here's one of my worm larders' – ‘This is my sleeping chamber. The dry grass and leaves I bring from above ground.’ At last they came to a place where their tunnel seemed to open up into an emptiness.

  ‘Find the walls,’ whispered the mole. ‘Feel them.’

  Bet groped to one side. ‘Pillars,’ she said. ‘Curved pillars.’

  ‘Of bone,’ said the mole. ‘And a bone roof-ridge above you. We are inside the ribcage of a dog buried here many years ago. Only bones remain. Franklin said his aunt had a dog, long before Moon was even a kitten. He was handsome, sweet-tempered and golden-coated, so she called him Sunny. He died, and she buried him here. He was much loved, I think.’

  ‘How do you know all that?’

  ‘The bones sing in the earth. Listen. Can't you hear them?’

  Bet listened; then, ‘No,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Never mind.’

  They stood side by side in silence, respectfully, as if they were in a cathedral. Everything was so still that even Bet felt the tremor in the earth that made the mole say in a low voice, ‘People are walking above us! We are not far from the field gate. Franklin must be back early from London and – yes, two sets of footsteps – the others could be your grandmother. We must get back at once – to the tree exit, I think. Hurry – hurry!’

  Bet hurried back along the way they had come, with the mole giving directions from behind her as he followed closely. ‘Right turn ahead. Now we're in the main tunnel again. Left ahead! Now right and sharply up! You should be seeing daylight at any minute –’

  ‘I can!’ gasped Bet.

  ‘As soon as you're outside, we'll start the expansion.’

  But ‘Now – now!’ screamed Bet in the tiny voice of part mole, part shrunken child. For outside she could just perceive, waiting, the face, astonished yet fiercely intent and eager, of Moon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Right Size

  From Bet's cry of ‘Now!’ the mole understood that – for some appalling reason – there was no time to wait until she was fully outside for their reversal of shrinkage. The two things had to be simultaneous.

  In panic the mole brought all his will to power with violent suddenness – and held it there. The result was extraordinary. Even as Bet scrabbled towards daylight, she was swelling – swelling – and the compression of the tunnel walls round her forced her forward fast and then still faster. In a shower of earth and also twigs and leaves she burst out of the mole-hole like a cork out of a champagne bottle.

  With a screech Moon had fled: for him this was a hundred times worse than attack with The Complete Poetic Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in One Volume. Startled by the caterwaul, the two pe
ople at the log looked round.

  ‘There she is!’ cried Mr Franklin, and Mrs Allum exclaimed, ‘Why's she there and not here?’ And then, ‘Something's wrong!’ Together they set off in alarm to Bet's prostrate form. She was lying with eyes closed and her face an almost greenish white, and damp. Her breathing was irregular and gasping.

  Mr Franklin questioned poor, distracted Mrs Allum about epilepsy or any other kind of fit. ‘Never!’ said Mrs Allum. ‘God forbid!’

  Meanwhile, Bet was recovering with surprising speed. Her eyes opened and looked around. The colour came back to her face and her breathing steadied. There were two odd things about her which Mr Franklin noticed; but Mrs Allum gave them little importance.

  Bet was staring about her, in doubt. She asked faintly, ‘Which am I?’

  ‘You mean,’ Mr Franklin said gently, ‘“Where am I?” You're in the meadow, under the ash tree.’

  ‘Don't bother the girl with talk!’ said Mrs Allum. ‘Oh! I must get her to a doctor or to hospital!’

  ‘No!’ cried Bet with sudden vigour. She scrambled to her feet to show how well she was, and stood, swaying slightly. Mr Franklin now made his second observation: ‘She really does seem to have grown since this morning.’

  The sight of Bet on her feet again calmed Mrs Allum at once. She could even respond to Mr Franklin's last remark. She said, ‘It's only what I tell him. Children grow.’

  Bet seemed well enough to be asked the obvious question: ‘What happened?’ But her answer was so confused that Mr Franklin and Mrs Allum together decided this was perhaps just a case of too much sun.

  Bet was escorted carefully back to the cottage, where she was made to rest for a while in a darkened room with her feet propped higher than her head. She was glad to lie there alone, while her whole body finished settling down into itself. Her bones, in particular, still felt shaken and sore.